Family Tensions Research Articles

Attitudes of Saudis towards entertainment and its Correlation to social cohesion – A study applied to a sample of Saudi citizens in the city of Jeddah –: اتجاهات أفراد المجتمع السعودي نحو أهمية الترفيه وعلاقته بالتماسك الاجتماعي – دراسة مطبقة على عينة من المواطنين السعوديين في مدينة جدة –

The current study aimed at identifying the attitudes of Saudi society members towards the importance of practicing recreational activities for: the individual, the family and the society as well in relation to social cohesion. The current study, as one of the descriptive studies, is based on the social sample survey method. Based on the study methodology and the goals it seeks to achieve, the researcher relied on both the questionnaire and the observation as two main instruments for collecting the field study data. In the current study, the researcher relied on the purposive sample that is considered among the non-probability samples. It was applied to 415 members of the community in Jeddah including Saudi citizens of all educational, economic and age levels except for those under 16 years old. The study found out several results and the most prominent ones are: recreation achieves psychological balance for the individual and reduces life tensions and pressures. The practice of common entertainment among family members is a good opportunity to alleviate family disputes and tensions. It also supports the principles of cooperation, collective participation, and communication; accordingly, strengthening social relations reinforces the cohesion of the social structure. The results of the study revealed that recreation helps the individual to integrate into society which is useful for the renewal of the individual's activity. In addition, the collective practice of recreational activities strengthens the family relations. Recreation is an opportunity to form good relationships between society members. Finally, the study found out that families should be aware of the importance of practicing purposeful recreational activities starting from childhood to adulthood. That is to satisfy the psychological and social needs of its members.

566-P: Is a Zoom, Family-Based Intervention Feasible during a Pandemic?

Background: Access to psychosocial services is limited, especially during a pandemic. A Zoom-delivered family-based intervention for adolescents with type 1 diabetes has the potential to enhance access to psychosocial services. Methods: Nine families enrolled in a pilot of a 6-session online (Zoom) intervention for adolescents with type 1 diabetes and their parents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected via online focus groups and surveys. Results: Teens’ ages ranged from 12-17 years (M=14.9, SD=1.76) and most self-identified as male (78%). All parents self-identified as female and most families self-identified as non-Hispanic white (78%). Qualitative results revealed that participants found the program to be generally helpful and would recommend the program to others. Perceived benefits included increased parental empathy toward teens, enhanced parental involvement in teens’ diabetes management, and decreased parent-teen conflict. Participants conveyed that these benefits were particularly impactful given increased family contact and tensions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Identified areas for improvement included adding follow-up group sessions with parents to maintain program impact on parenting over time and to target teens in early adolescence, when family dynamics are more malleable. Quantitative results from paired t-tests of pre-post comparisons revealed no significant differences in teen or parental diabetes distress or depression (all p>0.05), but should be interpreted with caution due to small sample size. Conclusions: Adolescents with type 1 diabetes and their parents responded positively to this program and found it particularly relevant during the current pandemic. Zoom delivery of these programs may be instrumental in their feasibility, acceptability, and ultimately dissemination in the future. Disclosure J. J. Wong: None. M. S. Lanning: None. J. Ngo: None. C. A. Wu: None. S. Hanes: None. H. M. Linzmeyer: None. D. Naranjo: None. K. K. Hood: Consultant; Self; Cecelia Health, Cercacor, LifeScan Diabetes Institute. Funding National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (1K23DK121771-01A1)

'I Was Smoking a Lot More during Lockdown Because I Can': A Qualitative Study of How UK Smokers Responded to the Covid-19 Lockdown.

This study explored how Covid-19 lockdown restrictions affected people’s daily smoking routines and behaviours, including adherence and modifications to pre-established smoking restrictions in the home. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with smokers and non-smokers from smoking households 19 to 27 weeks after the first full UK lockdown ended in May 2020. A non-probability purposive sample representing 25 adults aged 21 or over living in households with at least 1 smoker were recruited to the study. A quota sampling strategy was used, according to age, gender, smoking status, family status, household composition, householder access to outdoor space, and change to work-life status. Most participants found lockdown increased the amount of time spent at home, where stresses associated with confinement, curtailment of social routines, removal of barriers and distractions to smoking due to home working, and feelings of boredom all contributed to increased smoking. Fewer factors were identified as reducing smoking during lockdown. Prominent examples included disruption to habitual smoking patterns and distraction from smoking associated with spending more time doing outdoor activities. Pressures placed on physical space and lack of privacy due to the confinement at home were responsible for displacement of smoking within the home, leading to breaking of smoke-free rules and family tensions, and in some cases to greater awareness amongst parents that their children smoked. Changes in daily routines associated with lockdown affected and displaced smoking behaviour both positively and negatively. Health improvement interventions could seek to harness positive changes in smoking associated with any future lockdown approaches. New home-working norms highlight the need for employers to support staff to reduce their smoking and to remain smoke-free.

Contesting racist talk in families: strategies used, and effects on family practices and social change

ABSTRACT Differences of opinion between family members are familiar narratives for many people. When family tensions involve racist talk, how do family members navigate this? This paper asks: (1) What strategies do family members use to challenge racist talk within their own family? and (2) What effects do these strategies have on (a) on-going racist talk, (b) family practices and (c) broader social change around racism? In Australia, where this project was based, anti-racism campaigns often advocate for individual contestations of racism, but their effects on the structures of racism are not well known. This paper identifies four strategies used to challenge racist talk in families including (1) undertaking safe critique, (2) humour, (3) direct confrontation or violence and (4) reference to personal / familial experiences of racism. I found that individual contestations of racist talk within families may, at times, shift family practices (Morgan 2011) away from expressions of racism, or further the development of race literacy amongst some family members. However, this was very much a minority response to individual contestations of racist talk. To create social change, this paper highlights the critical need for activity that much more broadly seeks to dismantle racist structures and institutionalized racism.

• Impact of relative mental illness on caregivers

IntroductionBelarus is undergoing legislative shifts towards community-based mental health care. Responding effectively to support this process requires an understanding of the experiences and challenges facing families caring for a relative affected by mental illness.ObjectivesTo identify how caring for a person with severe mental illness impacts on family carers, and what carers identify as their support needs.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were undertaken with 17 caregivers of people affected by severe mental illness (diagnosis of F06.8, F20, F25, F7, and/or F 84) in Belarus between March - June 2019.ResultsCare-giving for a family member was usually undertaken on a full time basis with no option for respite. Whilst caring did, in cases, strengthen family solidarity, it also resulted in intensive stress and burnout, financial pressures, and high levels of family tension, exacerbated when the person living with mental illness was perceived as a potential safety risk. High levels of societal stigma meant that care-givers commonly felt unable to discuss their circumstances, travel in public spaces, or participate in community activities. Stigma also deterred carers from seeking professional support. Priorities for support amongst carers included better information, public awareness raising and sensitization, advocacy to support patient integration into social and economic life, peer support and respite for family carers, and an increase in mental health specialists.ConclusionsCaregiving affected family carers on multiple levels with predominantly negative consequences. Priorities identified by carers need to be considered and acted upon if community-based care is to become an effective option.

Decomposition of the Role of Family in Reentry: Family Support, Tension, Gender, and Reentry Outcomes

A vast body of reentry research has investigated the role of family in facilitating reentry success. However, it is largely unknown whether family can both be a source of support and conflict and if so, whether these impacts are gender-specific. This study explores the heterogeneous elements that family brings to the reintegration process. Findings suggest that released prisoners’ families can bring either crime-inhibitory or criminogenic influences depending on the familial environment. Support from family members protects respondents from criminal recidivism, while strained family relationships are a significant predictor for drug use. Moreover, the detrimental effect of family tension is gender-sensitive: Females released from prison suffer an amplified risk of reentry failure under family tension. Implications for correctional programming are discussed.

Ensuring better output in library services through work life balance: a study of librarians’ opinion

PurposeThis paper aims to attempt to explore and examine work–life balance situation of employees working in reputed academic libraries in Odisha, India and to study how they make a balance of duties and assignments offered to them in their respective organizations with that of their personal lives with possible recommendations basing upon the views of the respondents.Design/methodology/approachThe paper investigates how working librarians of the surveyed institutions maintain work–life balance. A structured questionnaire was administered among the respondents to elicit their responses. The investigators conducted specific interview sessions among some selected librarians of reputed libraries of Odisha, India to know their pragmatic views relating to the way they balance their official works with that of their personal lives. The gathered data was fed into MS Excel file for analysis and subsequent interpretation. SPSS was used for obtaining chi-square value for knowing the level of significance of result.FindingsThe study finds that majority of respondents express their job satisfaction and happiness with the working environment of their respective institutions, and they are offered annual increments and career promotion, as this has become the key aspect of every organization to retain employees. It further reveals that very few respondents express that they are desired by their respective institutions to devote extra time and very few male respondents indicated that they carry family tension in their mind to their respective work places compared to their female counterparts. Moreover, the study reveals that institutions are proactive enough to embrace modern information communication technology offering suitable digital working ambience to their employees.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper primarily deals with work-life balance of employees in the field of library and information science of the state of Odisha (India) as the respondents in its scope of discussion.Originality/valueThe paper aims to contribute new knowledge to the corpus of existing literature on work–life balance with some constructive outcomes for effective generalization.

Barriers to end-of-life care delivery to home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients: A qualitative content analysis

Background: In the last days of life, home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients have complex care needs. End-of-life (EOL) care for these patients is usually delivered at home. However, there is limited information about the barriers to EOL care delivery to home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients. Objectives: This study is aimed to explore the barriers to EOL care delivery to home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted in 2017–2018. Ten family caregivers and ten health-care providers were purposively selected. The main inclusion criterion was the experience of EOL care delivery to home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were analyzed through conventional content analysis. In total, 23 interviews were held with twenty participants. Results: The barriers to EOL care delivery to home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients were categorized into the following three main categories and ten subcategories: inappropriate community-based healthcare context (subcategories: lack of public home care services, lack of palliative/hospice care services, legal/ethical dilemmas, and wrong cultural beliefs leading to wrong EOL care), unsupportive healthcare providers (subcategories: limited preparation for EOL care delivery, negligence towards appropriate home care delivery, and indifference to patients' and their families' rights), and inappropriate family conditions (subcategories: families' lack of care-related knowledge and skills, families' poor financial status, and tension in families). Conclusion: There are different familial, financial, professional, organizational, and social barriers to EOL care delivery to home-dwelling terminally-ill older patients. Culturally-appropriate policies and strategies are needed for operationalizing EOL care, integrating it into the public health-care system, and preparing healthcare providers and family caregivers for its delivery.

On the Comedy of Race

On the Comedy of Race Albert Sergio Laguna (bio) Early on in my research for this article on race and comedy, I came upon a novel by Jessie Redmon Fauset titled Comedy: American Style (1933). Fauset, a prominent yet understudied writer and editor active during the Harlem Renaissance, tells the tragic story of Olivia, her family, and their relationship to the shifting nature of the color line through the prism of "passing" and social class. Critics debate the effectiveness of Fauset's treatment of these issues, but for me it is the title that is most provocative. Because, you see, Comedy: American Style is not funny at all. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson puts it plainly in her introduction to the latest print edition, calling the novel "anything but humorous" and explaining the title by suggesting that Fauset may have had a "Shakespearean understanding of comedy as a form in which the conflict revolves around marriages plots" (xvi). A plausible explanation, but this doesn't change the simple fact that the book is not funny. It is not even trying to be. What was Fauset suggesting about the relationship between comedy and race? With that title, Fauset asks the reader to think about a tragic passing narrative filled with familial tension, estrangement, and even suicide as a kind of "American" comedy. Though laughs are hard to come by, there are elements of the novel that gesture toward the comic: the passing narrative as a kind of misdirection or misidentification so popular in stage comedies; characters who are often single-minded and flat in their representation of particular ideas or traits; and most bluntly, the moment when the narrator conveys the thoughts of a character who has explained the phenomenon of passing as "a sense of perpetrating a huge joke" (70).1 For Fauset, then, race is not simply a topic for comedy but comic unto itself on the level of form. Race is a kind of "American style" of comedy at its core. [End Page 104] The goal of this article is to take Fauset's provocation seriously and to begin to think about the relationship between comedy and race on the level of form.2 To do this work, I take Fauset's insight out of the world of literature and her novel and into the realm of popular culture where the intersections of comedy and race have been a fertile source of creativity and consternation. I propose the term "the comedy of race" to explain how comedy is of race, how the very architecture of comedy and what makes us laugh can help us better understand how race itself works with, and independent of, comedy. Comedy stages the mechanics of racialization. By invoking comedy, I do not seek to pin it down to a single kind of manifestation.3 I am more interested in comedy as a mode that suffuses a range of genres, cultural production, and the everyday forms of relationality that constitute quotidian experience. Instead of trying to define lines where comedy might begin and end, this essay concerns itself with the signifying strategies comedy and race hold in common.4 Ultimately, I argue that race and comedy share formal qualities for producing meaning in the world—excess, ambiguity, and repetition—to advance two objectives. First, I explain the challenges that these formal similarities between comedy and race have posed to race and ethnic studies and how and why that has limited scholarly investigation. To understand form in this context is to better grasp why race and comedy have been such a provocative and often explosive pairing. Second, I aim to begin to imagine the critical possibilities that arise when the comic structure of race becomes the analytical emphasis. In addition to formal considerations, the critical productivity of pairing race and comedy together is enhanced by how deeply they imbue quotidian life on their own and when they intersect to produce racial comedy. Race and comedy inform how we imagine, and relate to, ourselves and others. From on-demand streaming entertainment and satirical news shows to our lives online mediated by memes, viral videos, and Twitter ripostes, comedy is what "people increasingly come to expect in the kinds...

Особливості проживання та долання складних соціальних ситуацій усиновлювачами в груповій психологічній роботі

Метою дослідження було визначити причини виникнення складних соціальних ситуацій у сім’ях усиновлювачів та особливості опрацювання таких ситуацій під час групової психологічної роботи. 
 Для вирішення цих завдань використано напівструктуроване інтерв’ю, включене спостереження, методи і техніки транзактного аналізу та монодрами. Визначено, що складні соціальні ситуації в сім’ях усиновлювачів виникають найчастіше у батьків, які мають певні психологічні та соціально-психологічні особливості (неопрацьована власна дитяча травма, нерозв’язані проблеми в подружніх стосунках, неконструктивна мотивація до усиновлення; неспроможність оцінити свої слабкі та сильні сторони у вихованні дитини-сироти або дитини, позбавленої батьківського піклування, яку вони хочуть усиновити або удочерити). 
 На основі результатів опрацювання складних соціальних ситуацій з усиновлювачами в групі психологічної взаємодопомоги доведено ефективність групової психологічної роботи. Усиновлювачі опанували навички саморефлексії, почали самостійно аналізувати причини негативної поведінки дітей, навчилися відкрито говорити про власні переживання і страхи. Психологічна робота з батьківською і дитячою его-структурою методами транзактного аналізу та монодрами допомогла усиновлювачам прожити власні дитячі травми, що справило позитивний вплив на формування близьких стосунків з дитиною та вирішення складних соціальних ситуацій у сім’ї. 
 У процесі групової роботи визначено низку групових механізмів, спираючись на які група усиновлювачів може розв’язувати проблеми сімейної взаємодії та долати складні соціальні ситуації. До таких механізмів віднесено групову фасилітацію, групову наративізацію індивідуальних історій, групову рефлексію та генераційний досвід долання травм. 
 Показано, що завдяки цим механізмам та пов’язаним із ними груповим феноменам долаються соціальні та групові міфи про усиновлення як про подвиг і негативну фатальність ситуації усиновлення, відчуження та напруження в сім’ях, негативні сімейні сценарії взаємодії, трансгенераційні травми та негативні послання батьків, натомість набуваються нові моделі поведінки в сім’ї, розвиваються гармонійні стосунки. 
 Перспективою подальшого дослідження є корекція негативного життєвого сценарію усиновлених дітей шляхом групової психологічної роботи з ними починаючи з молодшого шкільного віку. Оскільки батьки не завжди можуть допомогти усиновленій дитині подолати психологічні проблеми самостійно, часто вони стикаються з негативною проєкцією і незаслуженим обезцінюванням та недовірою дітей. 
 Практичне значення дослідження полягає в тому, що його результати можна використовувати для впровадження психологічного оцінювання майбутніх усиновлювачів. Створення психологічних груп взаємопідтримки усиновлювачів зменшує ризики дисфункції сім’ї та розусиновлення.

Enforced Separations: A Qualitative Examination of How Latinx Families Cope With Family Disruption Following the Deportation of a Parent

During the past two decades, U.S. immigration policies have been tightened resulting in increased deportations of unauthorized persons residing in the United States. This qualitative phenomenological study is theoretically grounded in family systems theory. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Latinx youth ( n = 8) and their remaining caregivers, specifically mothers ( n = 8) who had recently experienced the deportation of the child’s father. Findings from the analysis revealed that following the deportation of a parent, families (a) modified family structures and relied upon extended familial support, (b) experienced familial tensions, (c) experienced financial difficulties and housing instability, and (d) retreated from social life, including drastically shrinking social networks. Implications for practice include developing culturally based, trauma-informed interventions for Latinx families affected by deportation.

Animal magic or a bone of contention? An exploration of dog ownership and adaptation in people with post-stroke aphasia

ABSTRACT Background There is extensive literature on the impact of aphasia on human interactions, with findings including family tension and reduced participation affecting the person with aphasia’s ability to adapt to life post-stroke. However, research on relationships between people with aphasia and their pets is sparse. Studies in other healthcare fields have found benefits and drawbacks of pet ownership. The presence of a communication disorder adds a unique perspective, with implications for the ability to interact with the animal. Aim This study explores the experiences that people with aphasia have of dog ownership as they adapt to life post-stroke, from the perspectives of both people with aphasia and close family members or carers. Methods & procedures Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 people with aphasia and/or relatives or carers. Thematic analysis was carried out. Outcomes & results Three major themes were generated. These were: (i) the adaptation of the dog to the person with aphasia; (ii) the adaptation of the person with aphasia to their dog; (iii) experiences of dog-walking interactions. Positive and negative aspects were reported within each theme. Conclusions The implications of these findings are significant for rehabilitation professionals: just as the person with aphasia needs support in the context of their human relationships and the challenges and opportunities that these present, their relationship with their dog should also be considered.

Triple Role Overload: Working, Parenting, and Navigating Public Benefits

Much has been written about work–family conflict for professional women, while little attention has focused on poor working mothers. Stuck in low-wage jobs, millions of working mothers rely on public benefits to supplement poverty wages. This article looks at the ways in which work–family–welfare conflict affected mothers’ ability to maintain a stable family and work life. Using interview data and focus group data collected in Colorado, Georgia, and Massachusetts, the article uncovers the intersecting demands these mothers face and the ways in which they are ill-equipped to deal with these demands. The qualitative data are mothers’ voices as they discuss the demands of parenting and work, as well as the regulations of public programs. In contrast to middle and upper-income mothers who may purchase forms of help to ease work–family tensions, poor mothers rely on government programs to offset insufficient earnings. Our findings suggest these government programs may exacerbate work–family conflict for poor mothers.

Legal Power in Action: How Latinx Adult Children Mitigate the Effects of Parents’ Legal Status through Brokering

Abstract Scholars have long demonstrated that Latinx children engage in cultural and linguistic brokering on behalf of their immigrant parents. This article adds to this literature by examining how the transition to adulthood enables adult children to deploy their legal power to assist their immigrant parents. This study identifies three types of brokering using legal power: securing loans or access to credit, sponsoring immigration petitions, and becoming a legal guardian for siblings. Using 37 in-depth interviews with adult children, parents, and extended family members with varying legal statuses in California, I show that citizen adult children have greater capacity than DACAmented adult children in mixed-status families to exercise legal power when brokering. In addition, adult children’s legal power may be enhanced or limited by incomplete paperwork, family tensions, and economic background. These findings provide an understanding of how the transition to legal adulthood affects the way adult children of immigrants help their undocumented parents access resources and information, negotiate the effects of immigration laws, and reduce some inequality suffered by their families.

The Influence of the Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Violence in China.

The unprecedented outbreak and continuous spread of the COVID-19 virus starting in December 2019 resulted in a strict lockdown and nationwide long-term home isolation, which has possibly led to increased levels of family violence in China. This commentary aims to explore two issues related to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on family violence in China, with intimate partner violence as its most common form. These two issues are whether the COVID-19 pandemic has indeed had a negative impact on family violence and, if so, what its specific influences upon family violence in China have been. This commentary is largely descriptive and based upon previously published literature and public statistical reports from newspaper, government, and criminal justice sources on family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Despite the lack of relevant and accurate nationwide statistics on family violence in China, multiple reports seem to suggest that family violence has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase in family violence may be primarily due to the large-scale lockdown that aggravates family conflicts, economic distress and tension caused by the pandemic among family members, and inadequate support for victims of family violence during the pandemic. Family violence has become an important social issue that needs to be dealt properly and swiftly during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Both governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as agencies and service sectors, need to be aware of the needs of family violence victims and provide appropriate and immediate assistance to the victims during the pandemic. A detailed discussion of the policy implications and suggestions for future research are provided at the end of this commentary.

A-072 Neuropsychological Case Study of Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Neurocognitive Disorder​ in a Vietnamese Woman in a Community Health Setting

Abstract Objective Behavioral variant frontal temporal dementia (bvFTD) is characterized by progressive changes in behavior, personality, and cognition. Little is published on the presentation in non-English-speaking populations. Here is the case of a neuropsychological evaluation in a community health setting where language and cultural considerations were salient. Method A 73-year-old, right-handed, monolingual Vietnamese widowed female homemaker with five years of education and low literacy, was referred after gradual personality changes over five years caused family tension and a need for increased monitoring. History includes cardiovascular disease, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, cholestatic hepatitis, and depression with remitting psychotic features and suicidal ideation. Neuroimaging shows right temporal encephalomalacia and mild diffuse atrophy commensurate with age. Results A bilingual phone interpreter was used. Test findings revealed low scores across all but two tasks (visuospatial processing speed, recognition memory). Several confrontation naming items were unknown to the patient or culturally irrelevant, per interpreter. Interview with an English-speaking daughter revealed declines in behavior and social comportment (e.g., unsympathetic, demanding, rigid, repetitive, disorganized, compulsive shopping and gaming, confabulatory) and modest declines in activities of daily living. Presentation was notably childlike, overly affectionate, “grabby”, insistent, restless, with poor conversational turn-taking (with interpreter), but generally intact expressive and receptive language. BvFTD was diagnosed. Conclusions Addressing needs of a diverse, multi-cultural population in a community health setting can present significant challenges. This case study highlights the importance of non-psychometric sources of data, including history, observation, and collateral interviews, along with consideration of education, language, and culture on the evaluation process and case conceptualization.

The Impact of Education in South Asia

Education is produced within power relationships; therefore, power and social dynamics are central to any analysis of the impact of education. The acquisition and benefits of education are similarly intertwined by class, family, gender and social tensions, relentlessly mutating into different varieties, environments and appearances, and endlessly involving control. This is the essence of The Impact of Education in South Asia. Drawing from case studies, ethnographic research, and interviews from different parts of India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, the authors attempt to provide perspective to the relationship between education and society. Formal education challenges society by changing gender roles, household organization, family, and the caste system. Individuals negotiate and transform culture and the educational system.

Review: Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry, by Keesha M. Middlemass

Review: Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry, by Keesha M. Middlemass

What issues bring primary school children to counselling? A service evaluation of presenting issues across 291 schools working with Place2Be

AbstractBackgroundPoor mental health reduces children's ability to function at school, which in turn may undermine their mental health. The provision of school‐based counselling aims to help schools to support their pupil's mental health. Most work on the types of difficulties brought to school counsellors has focused on secondary school pupils (aged 11 years or over), and to our knowledge, this is the first study of presenting issues in younger children.MethodData were systematically collected using a list of 21 potential presenting issues during assessment and formulation of 8,893 children referred for counselling in 291 UK primary schools over 3 years. We explored the number, severity and types of presenting issues recorded by counsellors in the whole sample by gender.ResultsThe children assessed by counsellors had higher levels of known correlates for poor mental health than their peers in the same schools. Most children had multiple presenting issues, while 55% of children had at least one severe presenting issue. The commonest presenting issues were generalised anxiety, low self‐esteem, family tensions and mood swings. Girls were more likely to present with all types of anxiety and family tensions, while attentional problems and mood swings were commoner among boys.ConclusionsChildren referred for counselling in primary schools often present with multiple difficulties, which are often severe. This indicates the need for systematic and detailed assessment, adequate training and supervision and good links with external agencies.

The Lords of Tetzcoco: The Transformation of Indigenous Rule in Postconquest Central Mexico

In The Lords of Tetzcoco, Bradley Benton provides a much-needed overview of sixteenth-century Tetzcoco and its Native nobility. Perhaps best known as the second most powerful city within the Aztec empire, Tetzcoco was the capital of the larger Acolhua domain, Acolhuacan, and sold itself as the intellectual and cultural hub of central Mexico. Benton’s concern is not so much on the preconquest reputation of the city but instead on how its Indigenous rulers adapted to colonial rule and managed to retain relative power and affluence despite the fact that many other Indigenous nobles suffered a loss of political and economic power during the sixteenth century. Benton associates the relatively better fortunes of Tetzcoco’s leading nobles to their active responses to Spanish colonial rule and astute negotiations of new positions of power under this rule.Benton’s approach is largely chronological. He first explains the political situation in Tetzcoco in the years immediately before the conquest and in the first decades after the imposition of colonial rule. Just before the arrival of the Spaniards, Tetzcoco had experienced a breakdown in authority, with different factions of nobles competing for control over the city-state. Benton painstakingly reconstructs these different factions, their various familial connections, and their claims to power, which remained largely unresolved throughout the first decades of colonial rule. Benton uses the well-known inquisition trial of don Carlos Ometochtzin to shed light on some of these rivalries. As Benton shows, Ometochtzin’s denouement hinged more on the familial and political tensions that characterized 1530s Tetzcoco as well as Spanish norms regarding sexual practices and concubinage, than the more commonly referenced idolatry for which he was also accused.From 1540 through the mid-1560s, Tetzcoco experienced a time of relative stability, with two Tetzcoca nobles, don Antonio Pimentel Ihuian and his nephew don Hernando Pimentel Ihuian, reasserting traditional authority over the city. In chapter 2, Benton links their success to an adroit embrace of Christianity, their provision of basic services to the people of Tetzcoco, their legal responses to Spanish incursions on Native lands, and use of pictorial documents and letters to the king that promoted Tetzcoco’s preconquest greatness. Nevertheless, after 1564, Tetzcoco experienced increasing instability, with the city’s nobles losing political authority and Tetzcoco itself facing increasing economic pressure. And yet, despite these challenges, the noble family of Tetzcoco managed to retain some measure of wealth. In the second part of the book, Benton traces the survival of the family and its cacicazgo, or entailed estate. He focuses on particular family lines, paying special attention to the noble women of Tetzcoco and their mestizo children, including the well-known writers and cousins, Juan Bautista de Pomar and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl.Throughout the book, Benton explains his sources—which span the Native and Spanish spheres and include both alphabetic and pictorial systems of writing—with clarity and logic. In recent years, Tetzcoco has appealed to an interdisciplinary group of scholars whose works have contributed to an increased understanding of specific aspects of preconquest and early colonial Tetzcoco. By taking a wider approach to Tetzcoco and the fortunes of its leading families throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, Benton’s work helps to contextualize these other, more focused studies and provides students and scholars a necessary starting point for future works on Tetzcoco and the Acolhua peoples.